The mule fell before Myrine could pull Timon out of the way.
One moment he was walking beside its panniers, steadying the jars through the narrow cutting. Then its knees folded. He vanished against the bank, and the sound of breaking pottery went through her like a blow.
She caught the lead rope. The mule’s head struck the stones. It did not kick or try to rise.
“Timon?”
“Here.” His voice came from behind the load. “My foot.”
Myrine scrambled onto a shelf of limestone. Below her, his shoulders were wedged into a hollow in the bank. The nearer pannier had fallen across his right ankle. Three of her jars remained intact in it, their waxed stoppers pointing towards her. A dark thread leaked from the fourth.
“Can you bend your knee?”
He tried. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Stop. I’ll get it off.”
From farther down the cutting, Dorion, the guard, called for her to leave the rope.
She looked back, irritated. He was standing with his staff across his body. A snake crossed the road between them. Another slipped from a crack beside his sandal. Neither turned towards him. Both went into the loose stones below the road so quickly that the dust they raised hung behind them.
A thin hiss came from beside the mule.
On the flat stone beyond its muzzle, something small lifted the front of its body. Myrine saw a pale mark on its head, like a dab of lime drawn into a crown.
Dorion thrust his staff towards it. The little head struck the wood.
“It’s only—”
He stopped. His fingers opened, and the staff rang against the road. For an instant he stood with his empty hand extended. Then his legs gave way.
Myrine ducked behind the limestone shelf.
There had been no struggle. She could still hear the little movements of the other snakes escaping through the stones.
“What happened?” Timon asked.
“Keep your head down.”
“Is he hurt?”
She almost looked. The wish to see his chest rise was so strong that she had already lifted herself onto one elbow before she forced it back into the grit.
“The little king,” she said.
Timon stopped moving.
The Last Load
Myrine pressed her cheek against the stone. The road bent around her shelf; beyond the bend, it widened enough for two people to walk together. On this side lay the mule, the jars, the fallen guard and Timon. She was the only one who could reach the bend.
Under the pannier, something scratched.
“The cock,” Timon whispered.
She had forgotten it.
That morning he had appeared with the bird in a wicker cage and asked where he should tie it. Myrine had told him she was paying for a porter, not a poultry merchant. He had fastened it low on the mule’s far side anyway, where she would not have to hear it scratching beside her ear.
Now she could hear it very well.
“Can you reach the door?”
“My arm won’t go round.”
“Try with your left.”
“I have.”
She closed her eyes. His voice was still careful, as it had been when they bargained over his pay. He was afraid of making her angry. The absurdity of that frightened her more than if he had begun to scream.
“Tell me what you can reach.”
“The cage. One corner. It’s under the basket.”
“Not under the mule?”
“No. The basket.”
That was something. She worked her way along the shelf on her belly, keeping the rock between her face and the flat stone. Her sandals scraped behind her.
From this angle she could see the top of the pannier without seeing the mule’s head. The carrying strap stretched across its flank. Cut that, empty the basket, and she might lift it clear.
Her knife hung at her waist. She drew it, then stopped with the blade in her hand.
The guard had had a longer reach than this.
She listened. The scratching had ceased. Somewhere below her, grit clicked against stone.
“Myrine?”
“I am here.”
“Don’t use the staff.”
“I won’t.”
He had understood what the silence meant. She wished he had not.
The jars held the last of the blue dye. She had sealed them herself, scraping wax across each stopper with the back of this knife. At the port, their sale would pay her passage and leave enough to rent a room with a workbench. For three years she had set aside small measures from her share of each batch. Her brother had laughed when she bought jars of her own.
Now three of them lay above a boy’s ankle.
She reached over the rock and scored the leather strap. It was old, but thick where it doubled through the buckle. She could not put her shoulder behind the blade without raising her head.
The knife slipped. A white shaving of leather curled away.
“Can you pull your foot when it loosens?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t try until I say.”
She sawed again. The strap parted with a sound like a finger snapping.
The load dropped sideways.
Timon cried out. Myrine snatched at a jar, caught its handle, and held it while the basket settled. Her arm shook with the weight.
“Put it down,” he gasped.
“I’ve got it.”
“It’s on me.”
The bottom of the jar had rolled farther onto his ankle. She had saved it from falling and held it there.
Myrine let go.
It broke against the road. Blue liquid struck the limestone and spread through the dust in branching streams.
Timon sucked in air. She waited for him to breathe out.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
She pulled the next jar towards her. Its handle came over the rim, smooth under her fingers. She could have lifted it onto the shelf. There was room beside her.
But she needed that space to turn, and he was still beneath the load.
She pushed the jar out past the first.
This time she watched it break. The last jar followed, striking the same patch of blue stone.
The Bird
With the basket empty, Timon could drag his foot from beneath its edge. He got as far as his heel, then stopped.
“I can’t.”
“You’re nearly clear.”
“I can’t make it move.”
Myrine hooked her fingers through the wicker and lifted. Something shifted on the other side of the mule. The hiss came again, nearer now.
She held the basket up.
Timon pulled himself backwards on his elbows. His foot came free, the sandal left under the load. She lowered the basket carefully, though there was nothing left in it that could break.
“Stay against the bank.”
She could see the cage now. One side had collapsed, bending the door inward. Through the wicker showed a red comb and a round, furious eye.
The cock struck at her finger when she touched the latch.
“Good,” she whispered. “Be angry.”
She tried to drag the cage towards her. It caught beneath the broken basket. She pulled harder, and a wicker rib snapped. The bird beat its wings so violently that she lost her grip.
Beyond the mule’s foreleg, a little green shoot grew out of the bank. As Myrine watched, its leaves tightened. They folded along their centres, darkened, and hung against the stem.
She withdrew her hand.
There was no smoke. Nothing she could push away or cover with a cloth. The air above the shoot looked as clear as the air beside her face.
“Is it coming?” Timon asked.
“Don’t look.”
“I wasn’t.”
The indignation in his voice steadied her. She looked at the cage again, at the weaving that held it together. Wicker. A latch. Things her hands understood.
Instead of pulling, she cut the bindings at the near corner. One strip parted, then another. She folded back the broken side and slipped her hand through.
The cock drove its beak into her thumb.
She swore, caught it around the body, and drew it out. A foot snagged. She loosened her grip enough to work the claw free, terrified that it would get away before she was ready.
Then she had it, warm and struggling against her chest.
“Make it crow,” Timon said.
“I don’t know how.”
“Lift it up.”
She lifted it above the edge of the shelf, keeping her own face down. Its feet pedalled against the stone. It gave a harsh, indignant cluck.
Myrine waited.
At home, cocks called before dawn, during arguments, whenever a neighbour wanted to sleep. This one stood in her hands with its throat stubbornly quiet.
“Please,” she said.
It twisted and pecked at her wrist.
Below the shelf, scales rasped over grit.
She could hold the bird out with both hands, but then she could not help Timon. She could hold it with one and risk crushing a wing or losing it. She had already tightened her fingers until she could feel its quick heart hammering against them.
The cock stopped struggling.
That was worse.
Myrine put its feet on the shelf and opened her hands.
For a moment it crouched where she had set it, feathers lifted, wings held slightly away from its sides. Then it walked to the edge.
She kept her eyes on its feet.
A quick scraping came from below. The pale-marked head withdrew behind the mule’s muzzle; she caught only its backward movement before she turned her face into the rock. The cock stretched its neck, looking down.
“Timon. Come towards my voice.”
He dragged himself across the first span of open road. His injured foot left a crooked track in the blue dust.
The cock stepped sideways. A pebble dropped from the shelf.
Myrine wanted to seize it. She could tie its leg with a strip from her belt, keep it above them, make certain it did not wander away.
Timon reached up. His hand struck the rock below hers and slipped.
She caught his wrist with both hands.
Beyond the Bend
He was heavier than she expected. She had seen him lift the panniers that morning and thought nothing of the effort; now she could not raise him even the width of her palm.
“Your left foot,” she said. “There’s a notch.”
“I can’t see it.”
“Feel. Farther back.”
His heel scraped along the bank. Found purchase. Slipped.
Myrine braced one knee against the shelf and leaned away from him. Pain opened in her bitten thumb. For one sickening moment his wrist moved through her grip.
“Again.”
He found the notch. This time he pushed, and his shoulder rose above the ledge. She got an arm beneath it and hauled him against her.
The cock flapped down onto the road beyond the bend.
Myrine heard its landing. The small, ordinary thud seemed to take all the protection out of the air.
She turned Timon away from the mule before he could look back.
“Arm round my neck.”
“My sandal—”
“Leave it.”
He leaned on her. Together they moved along the shelf, his bare heel striking the bank. She watched the road beyond the bend. Six steps, perhaps. She tried to count them, but he stumbled at the second, and she had to stop and settle his weight again.
From behind them came the thin hiss.
Timon’s arm tightened across her throat.
“Keep going,” she said, though neither of them had moved.
He put his good foot forward. She followed it.
The cock stood in the widening road, tugging at a dry seedhead. It lifted its head as they approached. Myrine waited for it to run, to leave them with the bend still a body’s length away.
Instead it planted its feet and crowed.
The sound broke raggedly at the end. Timon flinched against her. She did not turn to see what had happened behind them. She took another step, then another, until the rock stood between their bodies and the narrow cutting.
They sat beside the road. Myrine could hear Timon breathing and, farther away, the small ticking of cooling stone. Nothing else came around the bend.
“Dorion?” Timon said.
She shook her head. She would have to bring someone back for him. Until this morning she had known him only as the man who argued over the cost of guarding the road; she had not asked where his people lived.
After a while he said, “Your jars.”
“I know.”
He looked at the blue on his hands. He began to rub them against the dust, then stopped.
She tore a strip from the hem of her dress and bound his ankle. The cloth took the colour immediately. Her hands were blue too, except where the cock had bitten her.
“You can leave me here and go for help,” he said.
There would be carts on the wider road. A farmhouse, perhaps, before that. She had no money left to promise him beyond what she already owed.
“Can you stand if I help?”
He nodded, then corrected himself. “I can try.”
The cock came close and pecked at a bead of wax stuck to her sandal. Timon reached towards it. Myrine almost told him to catch it.
Instead she put his arm across her shoulders. They rose slowly, giving his good leg time to straighten, and set off down the road. Behind them, the cock scratched once at the wax, abandoned it, and followed.
